Five lessons that Digital Minute has taught us about video content

Video content is becoming one of the biggest growth areas of content marketing. Earlier this year, Cisco claimed that by 2017, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic. Nielsen, a survey group in the US, reports that 64% of marketers expect video to dominate their strategies in the near future. Wherever you look, all of the signs point to video.

Stickyeyes has been producing video news bulletins, Digital Minute for just short of three months. Our first episode launched in early September and since then, we have been producing fortnightly updates from the world of digital. We’ve covered everything from Google algorithm updates and social media developments, through to Amazon drones and protests in Hungary.

This week's Digital Minute looks at some big changes coming to the two big social networks, Twitter and Facebook. Twitter has announced a series of changes as it looks to appease investors and reverse the fall in its share price, introducing algorithms to users news feeds for the first time. Meanwhile, Facebook is making it even easier for people to avoid messages from people that they want to hear less from, with the introduction of new privacy settings. Want to see more videos from Stickyeyes? Check out our Video Hub: http://www.stickyeyes.com/video Subscribe to our YouTube channel videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/stickyeyesTV. To get email updates of our latest video blogs, insights and intelligence, sign up to our email updates: http://www.stickyeyes.com/newsletter/ Subscribe to our Digital Minute podcasts: RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DigitalMinute Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/digital-minute/id915347858 Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stickyeyes/digital-minute?refid=stpr Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/stickyeyes/sets/digital-minute Find us on Twitter at @stickyeyes or visit our website at http://www.stickyeyes.com Hello, and welcome to Digital Minute. This week, we’re focusing on the two key social networks, as both Twitter and Facebook announce big changes. Twitter has been under pressure from Wall Street to improve its user growth and the company has responded this week, announcing a number of new features. The company has confirmed that it is introducing an algorithm to its news feed, which will prioritise some tweets based on relevance, rather than simply displaying tweets chronologically. 5 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:40,000 Other changes include pre-populated timelines, news notifications and video editing features, as Twitter looks to improve its user growth, keep users engaged and, of course, increase that share price. Facebook is also making changes, giving more control to users allowing them to de-clutter their news feed. Users will soon see new customisation settings that allow them to decide whether they want to see more or less content. Of course, it's another challenge for brands – many of which are already unhappy that Facebook is making it harder to get their content seen. If you don’t want to end up on the “ignore” list, make sure you keep your fans entertained. Thanks for watching. I’m Sophie Hazan, and that was your Digital Minute.

We have been delighted with the reception so far but above anything else, it is serving as a real-life example that even a relatively small investment of time and resource in video can go a long way.

Grow your reach, quickly

After just three months, Digital Minute has attracted more than 3,500 subscribers and at present, typically reaches 100 subscribers per day. That is a significant number to reach in what is a niche industry.

The nature of video distribution is such that one click has the ability to reach several thousand people, largely in a way that means that they don’t have to seek the content themselves. Most of our subscribers come from video podcast services, such as iTunes, which downloads episodes as they are released to a subscriber’s iPad, iPhone or iTunes account. It’s an extremely powerful method of distribution.

Digital Minute is also posted to Facebook and YouTube, giving us exposure across key video platforms.

Time is precious

We deliberately designed Digital Minute to be a short, bite-sized update of the key issues in digital, with further insight available on the blog for those that want it. Most stories covered are featured in more detail on the blog, and Digital Minute acts as a useful gateway to more of our content.

We deliberately keep every episode to 1:11 (hence the name) and try to cover two stories equally in each episode. We know that people working in digital are both incredibly mobile and time poor, so we create each edition so that it can be easily consumed on a busy commuter train, on a lunch break or in the back of a cab very easily.

It appears to be a timeframe that works for our audience, with the audience retention rates for Digital Minute significantly outstripping typical engagement rates for other types of video.

On average, viewers watch more than 77% of the total video length of each episode. That compares with typical averages of about 60% for other video projects and a typical average, according to B2B platform Wistia, of around 67 % for videos with a length of 1:00 – 2:00 minutes. In fact, Digital Minute outstrips the typical average retention rate for videos of 0:30 – 1:00 minutes (around 75%).

Show off your brand personality

Digital Minute is a great way of showing off the personality of Stickyeyes. Of course, we try to do this in all of our content but no medium does this quite like video.

Everyone in the agency has the ability to contribute to Digital Minute in one way or another. Everyone is encouraged to send in story ideas and support the script writing process and we aim to have different presenters every single week. It is something that we believe demonstrates the depth of talent that we have at Stickyeyes.

Filming takes place on a Monday morning, in a room at one end of our main creative office in Leeds. This is a time when the office is usually very busy, with people dashing around to meetings, sharing ideas and catching up on projects. We certainly hope that it demonstrates just how lively life is at Stickyeyes.

Your employees buy into it

Getting employees to buy into your content marketing can be tricky, but we’ve found that people respond much more positively to video than they do other forms of content. We get more shares and more feedback on our video content, particularly Digital Minute, than we do most other forms of content.

Of course, some people are more apprehensive than others about appearing in front of the camera, but we’ve found that once they have given it a go, they come back for another one. It’s immensely useful in helping people refine their presentation technique and it definitely creates some talking points around the office.

You don’t have to be Steven Spielberg

Lots of brands are apprehensive about video because of the amount of resources they believe it requires. What Digital Minute has demonstrated is that even the simplest idea can be hugely effective.

Digital Minute was designed to be resource-light. We can turn these videos around quickly and, should there be a major development that we feel we need to cover, we can easily write, shoot, edit and distribute an episode more quickly than you might think. Yes, it requires some investment in skills and equipment, but small ideas can yield big results.

Could we do something bigger-budget and more elaborate? With the skills and equipment we have, absolutely we could. But in doing so, we’d probably miss the purpose of what we’re trying to achieve. In many cases, the simplest ideas are the most effective and that is the core message to give to those brands that are shying away from video. You don’t need to come up with an Oscar nominee to appeal to your audiences. Just create something useful and put it where your audiences will find it.